In Essence
by Xeptin Bamboo
Summary: [Yogscast/The Creatures] After a certain god's base went up in a ball of flame during Voltz, Xephos feels the wrath of Ridgedog in the shape of being stuck on an island, untouched by mods after being separated from the mainland. With a new band of quirky friends, travelling through ruined cities, he has to find out why he's there and why he can't remember - along with surviving.
1. Chapter 1 - ωοrlδ το ωοrlδ

**[I'm posting this with only a bit of proofreading, so please PM me if you see any mistakes!]**

**TW: Mild blood and gore.**

**No OCs, and never will be.**

_**Heads up, this is a Yogscast/Creatures crossover, with special appearances from Creature-friends, such as ChilledChaos!**_

**(Ideas and things of the like greatly appreciated!)**

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"So, in essence, we're ditching this world for another?"

Another man briskly nodded, his eyes glancing nervously to and from the shorter, fatter man in front of him to the ruins and rubble that now littered the floor. A few burning pieces of wood, and curiously enough, stone, were scattered here and there, providing a large enough hazard that they were reluctant to step in the crater that use to be (one of their) greatest rival's base.

A pretty large base, to boot - the tree farm with the dozens of traps set up were only the beginning. Underground, a vast system of tunnels and wiring lay there waiting to be discovered, along with their horror, what seemed to be some kind of human testing chamber - fit with dried blood still splattered on the table. Along with the initial shock, the longer they were there, the more that the maroon-coated spaceman swore that he was here before.

But before he could open his mouth to dismiss his claims to his friends, he felt a curious prickling sensation in his skin. Looking back, slightly annoyed at his friend's widened eyes and shaky hands pointing at something, he immediately froze up.

Warnings on signs. By_ Ridgedog._

And that was all the warning they needed to grab as many items that they could hold and run - run out of there'd faster than any of them could have imagined they could go as fast as.

In the end, their scientist friend had almost experienced the same fate that his base had.

Being burned for a split second before having his body ripped to shreds, while his face was contorted in a mixture of surprise, anger, and shock - not a very nice way to go, especially at the hands of their enemies.

After swimming up to the shore with his companions, dragging the scientist with a thick trail of blood in the water behind, they sat down. One of them laughing hysterically at the fact that he could have honestly died on that same day, one of them staring blankly at the crater (and of course, dumbfounded that they had indeed destroyed a man's life work and probably invoked the rage of a god), and one playing with his cow farms like nothing had ever happened.

"Yeah, why not?", the blonde said in his normal nonchalant attitude, wiping off some blood that stained his face with his lab coat. His normally pristine coat was torn and had a mix of dried blood and mud splattered all across the front and back, along with some black, burnt edges that occasionally were spotted in. "I really not see why you're so frazzled about it, Xeph."

"Je-sus! Can't you count?! Or ditch that stupid attitude of yours and take a look around you?", the spaceman stood up and slammed both of his hands on the slab of wood that was in front of them, thrown as debris from the base. "We've been world-hopping for ages now, eating up all the resources and then blowing the whole place up. What happens when there's no more world to go to? Live in the craters of our past explosions?"

"Look, I'm sure it'll be just fine. Notch has made our world infinite, and not to mention we got these awesome new items on each and every on-"

"Oh, shut it up with 'Notch' and 'Jeb', will you? Worlds aren't, and can't, be infinite. I saw the whole planet on my way down to the stone and soil of this blocky place, and it sure as hell didn't look like it stretched on forever!"

The blonde stopped in his tracks for a moment, before murmuring something incomprehensible and returned on wiping his boot.

"You felt what happened today, being flung up into the air and almost burnt to a bloody crisp. You better decide on fixing the situation before it goes too out of hand, namely, making it so that we can't live anywhere anymore, and by that, fucking killing us all!"

The scientist looked up at him with a monotone expression and dull eyes. "Stop messing around, Xephos. Don't you always say that it's going to be fine?", he laced the rest of his boots and stood up stiffly, brushing a bit of dirt that clumped onto the back of his coat, "Everything's going to be alright, we'll just relocate."

Xephos opened his mouth to provide a retort, but stopped when he saw the bland and dulled expression in his eyes, like he was only a shell of the former man that would have normally snappily say some kind of counterargument. This Lalna seemed to have lost all will, and was just trudging forward from survival instincts.

Perhaps he shouldn't have snapped at him so readily, like he was holding back on somethi-

A splitting headache knocked the wind out of Xephos, his knees buckling to the ground as he clawed at his throat as if opening a hole in his neck to let more air in. He felt some kind of pressure that seemed to put his whole body in a vice, constricting movement to a pitiful twitch, and he let his eyes wander around while trying to comprehend what he was feeling, and what was happening.

His mind tried to piece together the world. What was he doing, again? Thinking about how his memory was in such a fragile state? What the hell happened in the base that made Ridge wipe it, anyway?

"Hey, Xephos."

The spaceman coughed in response, tilting his head to look at the fancy-haired god that loomed above him.

"Remember anything?"

His question was ominous, and instead of his normal, cheery outlook on everything (including brutally murdering his friends), he had a grave, somber face that was etched onto his skin.

Xephos let out a shuddering exhale as he tried to speak, but only made a little squeak instead.

"Is that a no?"

He did his best to nod, the pressure on his chest lifting just a little bit. Or just a trick of his mind?

"That's nice."

He snapped open his eyes, weary from his past experiences with Ridgedog. Although, weren't his eyes already open? He took a slight look around, taking in every aspect of the cold, marble room around him. Cracks were present in the ceiling, although Xephos doubted if he could reach them to exploit the weakness. An electric light was placed in the middle of the floor, although he could see no seams in the place where they connected. A camera, presumably recording his every move, was stationed in the upper corner of the room, whirring slightly every time he moved out of the view of the recorder.

Oh Notch, he would absolutely hate it if Ridge kidnapped him _again_.

"Ridge?", he calmly said, spinning around to face the camera, "Bloody hell, what is it now?"

The camera only dilated it's view before returning again, to focus on the red-coated spaceman in front of it. If Ridgedog could see him at this moment, he wasn't making any move to show it.

Xephos sighed and sat down in the corner, reflecting on the experiences today. Sure, Ridge would be kind of pissed that they blew up his precious life's work, but then again, it was he himself who put the self-destruct mechanism in the first place. Perhaps he thought that he would have had ample time to evacuate all his items? They were lucky that they caught him off-guard, so that they all didn't bump into the wrath of the god.

Or at least, the closest thing to a god here. Who else could fly, make whatever they want out of thin air, and periodically send them all to the death to fight everyone?

"Come on Ridge, I know you can hear me."

The camera made no response.

Xephos blankly looked upwards into the ceiling, half-noticing that instead of his normal maroon and gold coat, he was wearing a plain white dress-like thing instead. It was slightly scratchy and would have fit him about two years ago, but he didn't care at the moment - just a way to get out, a way back. The familiar pang of remembering something hidden deep in his mind, and it struck him with the force of a storm.

He was here before, this is what happened to make him say the things he said in the now-destroyed base.

He chuckled nervously, eyes darting across the room, now determined to find an exit. There didn't seem to be a door anywhere - Ridge probably teleported him in.

Of course, Ridge could only teleport in if there was someone inside in the first place, right?

He pawed at every inch of the wall limply, driven by the hope of finding some kind of escape. He furrowed his brow and punched at the part of the wall that felt the weakest, but only got a bloody knuckle in response.

"Come _on_, Ridge! Let me out!"

Shaking his hand and watching the blood fall to the floor with a big splat, he carefully eyed the crack in the ceiling. Perhaps if he were to jump up and claw at it, he could get a big enough hole so he could crawl out?

He grumbled something incomprehensible and slid onto the floor, defeated. A sharp pain cut through his side, however, and he snapped open his eyes and ripped off his shirt to see what was wrong. A bit of blood dribbled out, although it wasn't really much.

At least, wasn't really much for some kind of dark crystal protruding out of your side.

It's spikes shot out of his body, the tip probably wedged deep within his flesh. After staring at it for a few seconds in shock, he took a few ragged breaths and poked it - surprisingly, he felt nothing. It's blue, black, and purple essences swirled around behind the clear walls, with bits of white speckled in.

_How the heck did this get here?_

Using one of his hands, he tried to pry it off with no luck. It flashed with a pulsing sky-blue light the moment his fingers rested on it, but it disappeared the moment his skin cut contact. The mysteries keep on coming, huh.

At last, he gave up on the prospect of taking the strange thing off of his body. The initial panic had worn off, and now only the lingering confusion and resentment remained. For a few seconds after touching the crystal, however, he could have sworn he heard this metallic ringing noise the slowly built up in his brain - guiding him to remove his hand off of it immediately.

_Notch, I didn't really get to say sorry to Lalna, did I?_, he reflected, shifting his eyes from the floor to the ceiling. a few beams of light shone through the minuscule gaps, taunting him with visions of fresh air and light instead of being stuck in a marble room with a camera for company. Presumably Ridge, too, although he didn't quite get why Ridge would suddenly panic and throw him in here.

He was always the calm, collected and carefree one - what prompted him to do this?

Maybe something about his memory - a sharp jab stopped him in his tracks, and he opened one eye to see that the crystal was growing brighter by the second, illuminating the room in it's strange, pulsing light. It cast eerie shadows of the outline of Xephos' body, making his shadow appear to be dancing and grinning in the light.

"Hey, Ridgedog, know what's happening?"

The camera only stared on in silence, taking everything in. Xephos swore under his breath and tried to cover the crystal with the scraps of his coat, now blood-stained, and used the rest of it to make a makeshift shirt. It was sloppily put together and at sometimes quite patchy, but it would have to do.

Now, where was his prison, anyway? Voltz would have been cloud over with dust and debris for _ages_, and both of the Tekkit worlds were filled to the brim with machinery, magic, and a variety of bees.

Xephos scratched his head, closing his eyes to concentrate a bit more. There were much more than three worlds, he was sure - in the darkest corners of his mind, he knew that for certain, that there were at least four worlds, or continents, drifting across Minecraft.

Oh _gods_, that's what Ridgedog wanted to remove from his head, wasn't it?

But why?

A few memories swirled into his mind, trying to piece themselves together - Ridgedog, with his overly fancy coats that covered nearly every inch of his body. A pale man with crimson eyes that brought up bile in his mouth whenever he dwelled on them for too long. Ridgedog's aura that floated around him wherever he went, sometimes more bright (sometimes even painfully bright) on days where he seemed more content with the world.

The crystal embedded in his chest flared an ominously dark colour before returning to it's bright flashing, sending out waves of pain originating from there, slowly creeping to his head.

A short moment of panic was all he could muster before he flopped onto the ground, dull-eyed and staring blankly into the wall, like he could see right through it, with red blossoming all across the pristine floor.


	2. Chapter 2 - τμε ουτsιδεr

**TW: Mild blood and gore, infrequent swearing, vague references to shipping **

**Yet again, please PM me or let me know in some way if there's a mistake in this chapter.**

**Yes, Chilled and Ze make a prominent appearance is this chapter (and a few after this one), but I can assure you everyone else (including the rest of the Yogscast) will appear later on.**

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"Ze? Ze, come _on_, you're spacing out again."

The (kind of) Viking tilted his head back and looked towards the cloth-clad half-human that was currently looking at him rather annoyed. Along with being possibly the only human/cloth monster hybrid there could be out there, he was Ze's best friend and adventuring buddy.

"No, no, I swear that I heard something underground here."

The other rolled his eyes, tinted slightly yellow from his heritage, and patted him lightly on the shoulder. "I heard there were some new explosives being developed over in the larger civilisations in the mainland?", he started, pointing his chin towards the general direction of the ocean. Thousands of years ago, a bridge of sand connected the small island to the mainland - but as time went on, it suddenly disappeared, leaving a giant ocean in it's wake. "At least, I sure heard them."

"...yeah."

The half-sackboy, Chilled, made a weird face at him before rolling his eyes. "What's gotten into you, huh? Still bummed out over the fiasco?"

Ze bit his lip, remembering the few terrifying moments when the group got into a fight with themselves, leaving two of them to fend for themselves. One of them happened to be Chilled, who didn't seem to be affected at all by the sudden plot twist.

"Knew it. Don't worry, all you need to do is sneak out every once in a while and it'll be just like old times!", he replied optimistically. He always somehow knew the emotions of the shorter man, and it slightly unnerved him when those brown eyes with gold splashed on them bore right into his heart. Two of the traits of a cloth colossal, more commonly known as a sackboy, the dead eyes that betrayed no emotion and a grin that stretched from ear to ear, was passed onto a human body - giving an unnerving effect of being humanoid, but not human enough to look remotely normal. Right in the middle of uncanny valley.

"Won't they get suspicious?", Ze flitted his eyes around as he thought he heard something again - something about dogs? Well, whoever he was hearing wasn't Kootra for sure.

"Just say that it's perfectly normal for an adult to periodically get outside to seek some,", Chilled placed his hand on the other's chin and lifted it up, leaning slightly closer. A little too close, by normal standards, but Ze was use to the pseudo-flirting that his friend always gave to him. "..Fun."

Ze laughed nervously, checking over his body posture to see if he was joking or if this day it was for real. He let out a sigh of relief when he burst into laughter a second later, involuntarily snorting a little on the way.

"Je-sus, I can't belie-"

A bright flash of light drew their attention away from their latest hijinx, and an ear-splitting scream held it. It sounded like some kind of horrifying monster was being tortured, or perhaps ripped apart, and it kept on flooding out - after a few second, which felt like years to the terrified duo, it stopped, and a small thunk of a body hitting the floor could be heard.

Another puff of black smoke, mixed in with powdered debris, rolled up from the horizon. A few shapes were flitting around, but mostly a blur to the naked eye - Ze had to squint to see someone, flying, as weird as that sounded, before plummeting into the hard rock below.

"What the fuck was that?!"

"I-I", he stuttered, remembering the strange voice he heard calling out from underground, "The person underneath us? Maybe...?"

Chilled's horrified expression turned back into his normal, exasperated face. "Eh, I guess it can't really hurt to dig around a bit? I ran out of coal the other day and..."

The hybrid was use to having many people backing him up and helping him out. With Ze only able to visit him periodically, or at some weeks, none at all, he had trouble setting up a new base - and in the long run, it would normally lead to death.

In the matter of fact, Ze had found him last week starving and searching around for scraps near one of their burned-down houses, namely, Hotel Dinosaur (or Lava, whoever one they liked at the time). Ze had to drag him back to some place where he almost refused to take help from the older, but shorter man, until faced with the prospect of actually dying.

Now, wouldn't this be a better place if you could never die? Or rather, had some way of coming back each time you kicked the bucket? As implausible as it sounded, legends passed onto the mainland to the islands, from the time where you had to cross dry deserts instead of an ocean filled with treacherous whirlpools and monsters, told of two heroes (or more, depending on the person), an outsider and a miner, that could live forever by repeatedly coming back to life every time each one was slain. He shuddered, thinking back on an image of the outsider's eye being torn apart and thrown away, only for the attacker to realise that the bloody hole that covered his eye was slowly forming another one, with white goo dripping down and hardening (not to mention spinning freely of the other eye), only for muscles to attach themselves onto the new eye and lock it into place with a layer of skin on top.

It didn't help that the outsider was smiling the entire time, whether to being indifferent to the massacre going on all around him, not caring, or the grin that stretched from side to side as he tore apart his enemies.

Some heroes.

A loud thunk noise drew him away from his daydreams as Chilled struck a piece of stone with his pickaxe, cracking it into cobblestone before picking it up into his inventory. He had a determined expression on his face, obvious to Ze but probably not obvious to anyone else that was only looking into his eyes, as he swung the pick again and again before hitting what seemed to be a weird white stone.

"What the fuck is this?"

Ze puffed a bit and approached the smooth white rock, feeling around the edges and seams. It was unlike anything he had ever seen in the island before - this was probably some kind of mainland ore or rock, he was sure, but it might have still been dangerous. Out of a crack in the ceiling, he could see a bit of light leaking out - sky blues and deep purples, mixing in with small flashed of white.

Like stars.

Ze cautiously crawled onto the box, poking the ceiling for a bit before deciding that it was safe to stand on. Chilled dragged his half-broken (but somehow still usable) iron pickaxe, probably made with the last bit of iron he managed to run away with.

A light behind his shoulder made him freeze in his tracks - what seemed to be a small ball of purple light streaked past him and flew right into the room, going right through it like a ghost before reappearing on the other side, seeming content (as content as a ball of light could be, anyway) and a little brighter as it flew off into the sea. Slowly but surely, more and more of the strange balls of light floated in and out of the hole in the clearing they made uncovering the box.

A flash of something that looked strangely like a sick skin tone flashed from beneath the cracks, which caught Ze's attention like a trap. He pushed himself up out of his crawling stance and walked towards it slowly, as if a hand could reach out and drag him under into the strange box at any moment - the whole thing was terrifying, yet exhilarating at the same time. Finally, something new! Perhaps mods, like the mainland was rumoured to have (wires that did all the digging for you? Yes, please), or something else entirely? It would be great for the small island off into the sea to finally get it's own independence, instead of always being mown as the plain island that no one dared to visit because of the strange outcasts that lived there.

He heard something that sounded like a body hitting stone. What the hell was in the box, anyway? Some kind of genetically enhanced creeper that would leap out and blow them all up, all while spawning in more and more creepers? A mass-murderer with it's latest victim inside, sacrificed to to ensure that it would be lead into the trap?

Or something even more horrid than that?

Although, he was pretty sure that it was just a sick human that had been kept out of the sun for too long. The skin looked human enough, anyway.

He motioned for Chilled to get over there, an exasperated sigh as his response. He brought up his pickaxe and swung as hard as he could just in case the white stone was strong.

The pieces of his pick went flying everywhere as it used up it's last swing, a large chunk of iron almost embedding itself into Ze's eye socket. That would have been a bad end, wouldn't it? Almost at the start of an adventure, only to be killed by your best friend's broken pick? He wouldn't want to have that on his gravestone.

A bit of the white stone scattered all across the landscape, leaving a rather big hole in the ceiling and letting the sun seep into the corners of the box. Although, it was rapidly getting dark, do there wasn't much sun to work with - along with the fact that they were far away from their temporary base, Ze had a suspicion that they would have to share this space with whatever horror was cast aside into here.

Something mechanical, or what he presumed to be part of a mod, whirred in the corner. It looked somewhat like a spider eye, gleaming as it took it whatever it wanted into it's lens, turning a bit, and dilating when it saw the duo.

A bright red light in the middle of the room was covered by something, the only light source now being the light blue glow.

Of course, in the dimming light, the warm glow casted from whatever light source was a welcome to the days of huddling outside in the dark with only themselves for warmth. He could have made a fortune from asking for a penny every time Chilled decided to make a "intercourse would make us warm" joke, and have plenty of money to dump into the sea to make a bridge connecting the island to the mainland.

They both hastily patched up the ceiling with leftover cobble before any mobs could have spotted them and immediately made a beeline towards whatever was making the glow, slightly aware that the camera was following them every single step of the way. Ze almost tripped over something fleshy (and looking somewhat like an arm), before settling in a nice spot pressed up to Chilled.

Chilled let out a sigh of relief at the stroke of luck - without this box placed here, they would have had to face the night with barely any weapons and food - a sure-fire way to get one killed. It would be awkward to have the other thing in here wake up, and the thought of having to explain their plight to some stranger made Ze antsy.

He never did like crowds.

Ze rested his head onto Chilled's shoulder, letting his eyes lazily wander across the room. He would definitely need to ask wha exactly this stone was - it looked very pretty, or at least much better than cobblestone and brick that normally made up the buildings in this island (along with some wooden and dirt/cave houses littered around the area, but those were normally burnt and had nothing in them except for the charred corpses that were encountered every so often). The spider-eye-thing was bugging him, though - he had no idea what it did or what it was doing right now, other than the fact that it looked like it was observing them without actually having a real life eye.

His thoughts also wandered too, to the outsider and miner of legends - what would it have been like to live in the days of sand and terror, watching two heroes cut him down and realising that the heroes were actually insane and should be held as villains in their own right? Or, maybe, the townspeople were too busy thanking them for saving the entire world that they never saw past their good qualities and never saw the darker side of the two heroes.

The image of the outsider, a bloody face and matted hair with a smile forever plastered on his mutilated face disturbed him though, and his body was screaming for him to react. Although, he saw no reason to - Chilled's soft snoring had already calmed him down to a point where he felt like he was going to pass out at any second, and of course, the outsider and the miner were only stories to scare the gullible and make children obedient, after all. Although, there hadn't been any children in a while, he thought, letting his eyes fall on the arm or hand of the thing right next to many guys and not enough women. As in, so many guys that they have to get off their frustration in each other.

Not like there was anything wrong with it, it's just that it lightly unnerved him to see two best friends hooking up.

It definitely wasn't going to happen to Chilled and Ze.

His gaze drifted up from the arm to the glow (he could see that is was being casted for a kind of crystal the was placed right under it's arm or something), to the drab white and uncomfortable-looking dress thing of some sort, to it's face (or he, as he figured out), to the

_**bloody face bloody hair smile plastered on his mutilated face**_

The thing in front of him was the outsider, with a crystal stabbed right into his chest which was now soaked with blood.

He could smell it now - the metallic tang. How foolish of him to think it was all machinery.

Ze had never thought he'd scream as loud as he did that night in his life


End file.
